“We were fortunate to buy in the right place,” Smith says of his family’s original vineyard.

Yeah, a little. Smith’s small-output winery, Saxum, has produced some of the most highly rated wine in America over the past few years.

Saxum’s 2007 James Berry Vineyard made Wine Spectator’s 2010 Wine of the Year. Wine tastemaker Robert Parker was also impressed, awarding it a 100-point score. “Utter perfection, and one of the most profound Rhone Ranger wines I have ever tasted,” he announced.

Clearly, something more than luck is at work in the hilly vineyards surrounding Smith’s home a few miles west of Paso Robles.

His good fortune, like all good fortune, is the result of decades of hard work, trial and error and growing insight.

Family farm

Smith’s father, James, a San Diego county veterinarian, bought the James Berry property when Justin was 10. He started dabbling with grape-growing immediately.

“My parents originally planted Burgundian varieties,” Smith recalls. “They were going off what had worked over at HMR.” (Hoffman Mountain Ranch, which was founded by Dr. Stanley Hoffman, a pioneer of Paso’s modern wine industry, who planted his first vines in the early 1960s.) “They put in mainly chardonnay here. It did well, but the market for Paso chardonnay was never there.”

James ended up working for Fetzer Winery. “We were selling pretty much all of our stuff to them,” Justin Smith recalled. “He became their rep for the Central Coast.”

In the late 1980s, the Smiths made a crucial decision to change direction when local winemaker John Alban returned from France with a radical suggestion.

“He just got back after spending some time in the Rhone and he was very excited about this crazy idea, that we could grow those grapes here. Rhones were not on my dad’s radar before that. John convinced him that this might be a great spot. So we put in a couple of test blocks of mourvèdre and viognier.”

Soon others were following suit, and they enlisted the Smiths to help. Kenneth Volk, who found early success as the owner/winemaker of Wild Horse, had them plant some syrah, the dominant varietal of the northern Rhone. “We put in a 3.5-acre block of syrah for Kenny in 1990,” Smith said. “It did well.”

In 1995 the Smiths purchased another 20 acres in the area, and by this time the die was cast: they planted nothing but Rhone grapes on the new property. “There was no turning back from that point,” Smith said.

Measured growth

On a battered ATV, Smith and I bounced up a long incline from his home and main winery production facility to a large opening in an almost sheer cliff. Taking shape underground was his pride and joy: a large and smartly designed wine cave.

“We’ve been working on this cave for about six years now,” Smith explained as we entered through a still-unfinished door into a large main vault that was considerably cooler than the outside air even on a warm day. “It’s expensive, but it makes so much sense in this warm climate. It also pencils out in the end when you realize that you’re spending thousands every month to chill wine bottles in an 80-degree room.”

The end of the tunnel revealed the composition of the rock. It was brilliant white and filled with fossils – a prime example of calcareous formation, a geological characteristic that the area west of Paso Robles shares with France’s Rhone region.

“We’ll do all of our fermentation in here,” Smith said, gesturing around him at the 13,000-square-foot facility. “Clearly, with our present capacity” (around 5,000 cases per year) “we won’t have to stack very high. We could double capacity pretty easily, but I’d rather have the room. That’s what I’m looking forward to.”

Smith has been slowly expanding his output, and once the wine cave is in business he will eventually increase production to about 8,000 cases a year. By wine industry standards, that’s minuscule. But for Smith, it’s all about maintaining quality and control – and enjoying himself in the process.

“All of our vineyards are within a mile of my house. It’s a magic spot here. All of our production is sold through our mailing list. I’ve scaled back my consulting, too.” Only Epoch, a historic winery in the York Mountain AVA, gets the benefit of his advice.

Don’t put the cave on the card!

While he joked about retirement, Smith said there are new frontiers to explore.

“We’re going to start making white wine. We’ll be able to age longer with the cave – we have the space and the ability to leave the wine in barrels longer. We have a new vineyard coming online soon.” The 8-acre block will bring Saxum’s total size to 25 acres within the next four years.

With his cult status assured – Saxum sells almost all of its wine through its mailing list – and his output capped by choice, Smith enjoys the luxury of being able to increase quality in almost any conceivable way. The cave was paid for up front, he said. “We waited a long time to do it; we wanted to save a lot of money up. Early on my wife told me, ‘You can do whatever you want, just don’t put us in debt. Don’t put it on the card.’”

Paul D. Hodgins is a freelancer who previously worked at the Orange County Register since 1993. He spent more than two decades as the Register’s theater critic, and for eight years he wrote about dance as well. Hodgins has also written for American Theatre, Variety, The Sondheim Review and Backstage West. Hodgins has also been active as an educator and scholar. He was the music director of the dance department at The University of California, Irvine from 1985-92 and served in similar positions at Eastern Michigan University, Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University and the Banff Centre for the Arts. His book about relationships between music and choreography, 'Music, Movement and Metaphor,' was published in 1992. Since 2001, Hodgins has taught arts and entertainment journalism at California State University, Fullerton. Hodgins holds a doctorate in musical composition and theory from the University of Southern California. He lives in Huntington Beach.

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